It may not show in the polls, but presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appears to have improved her standing among members of the Democratic National Committee that met last week in Minneapolis.

Lori Sellner, one of seven members of the Minnesota contingent to the DNC, said she saw a lot of excitement generated by Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders but Clinton offered something new. “What I was seeing from Secretary Clinton — I think she’s doing a better job of being more personal and personable,” Sellner said.  “I like seeing that a lot.” 

A report in the New York Times offered a similar observation: “'I had kind of low expectations for Hillary Clinton: Almost all of the clips I’d seen on television showed her as kind of stiff, distant and reading her remarks,' said Rick Boylan, a Democratic national committeeman from Florida. Instead, he said, 'she was on point, direct, strong, and spoke from the heart' as she delivered lines, like 'the party of Lincoln has become the party of Trump,' that delighted Mr. Boylan.”

Sellner, in essence, agrees. “I had always heard from different people who had more one on one interaction with her, that she was more personable than she was in speeches,” she said.  “That is coming through a little more.”

The approximately 700 Democratic super-delegates like Boylan and Sellner are party influencers. Sellner said she’s often approached by volunteers who are interested in joining a campaign effort.  She looks for candidates that will keep the volunteer base energized.

Sellner said she saw that sort of enthusiasm generated by both Clinton and Sanders. And she gave a nod to former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley. “I was impressed with Chafee’s record in Rhode Island and O’Malley’s delivery certainly excited the crowd,” she said.

Sellner remains uncommitted. “I think I’m still holding out for a debate or two,” Sellner said.  “I also talked to people from Alaska and South Dakota and other states who said they haven’t signed on the line yet.”

The first debate among the Democratic candidates for president will be held October 13 in Nevada.

Donald Trump officially won the Minnesota Republican Party’s very unofficial corn poll of presidential candidates at the State Fair, where visitors filled growlers with corn to indicate their preference.  

And Trump won by a sizable margin – getting 25.5 percent of the votes in the field of seven. (Check out the full results here.)

All of which raises the question: Can Trump build a campaign organization in Minnesota to turn those kernels into actual people who will go to the state’s precinct caucuses on March 1? After all, as The Upshot column in the New York Times noted: “… amassing the delegates and voters to win the nomination is a lot harder than withstanding attacks on controversial comments five or six months before an election.”

To find out, I asked some party activists how they viewed Trump’s appeal and his capacity to turn personal popularity into political reality.  

Bob Maginnis, president of the Republican Seniors of Minnesota, worked the GOP’s State Fair both and witnessed the support from fairgoers. “I’m flabbergasted at what he’s been doing, but he sure seems to be getting a lot of people on his side,” Maginnis said. “When he first started, I thought, what a clown. But he’s beginning to make an awful lot of sense.” 

Maginnis said he has seen no evidence of a Trump organization in the state and, uncommitted to any candidate himself, he looks at Trump as a long shot for a caucus win. 

For a candidate like Trump, organization isn’t as critical, according to Jack Rogers, president of the Tea Party Alliance. He believes Trump will maintain the mainstream and social media presence that will propel his supporters to the caucuses, where the winners of a straw poll will bind delegates to the national convention.

“He’s got money and he has his own media outlet,” he said. “He will have an organization, and he will be there.”   

As for Trump’s positions on taxes, abortion, and health care — all of which are antithetical to the Tea Party — Rogers thinks it’s simply a matter of education. Not of voters, though: of Trump. “He is not well informed yet, but he will be informed,” he said. “I think he will choose a vice presidential candidate that will shore up those issues.”   

Trump still hasn’t crashed and burned in the manner that many pundits predicted a few months ago, notes former 2nd Congressional District Chair Bill Jungbauer, but he thinks he will, eventually. 

Jungbauer is a Libertarian. Trump, he says emphatically, is not. “He [Trump] does what he needs to do for him,” Jungbauer said. “I believe he’s another Jesse Ventura, only with thicker skin.”

Like Maginnis, Jungbauer said he has seen no grass-roots efforts on behalf of Trump, and says, in fact, the strongest support at the caucus level is for Libertarian favorite Sen. Rand Paul, whose father, Ron Paul, controlled Minnesota's delegation to the national convention in 2012.

Still, “it’s possible Trump could pull something off,” Jungbauer said.

With the earliest primaries and the March caucus still months off, Maginnis said it’s way too early to predict a Trump turnout in Minnesota. 

“I think it might depend upon on what happens in Iowa, in New Hampshire, what happens in those earlier states,” he said. “That might be a momentum thing that keeps him going. Or he might say something so stupid that people are going to hate him.”

At this point, presidential campaigns in Minnesota are so embryonic as to be undistinguishable, with one exception: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s campaign has the distinction of having, thus far, the only local paid staff.

Zavier Bicott, a Republican activist from Bloomington, is Paul’s state director for Minnesota. “My responsibility is going to get people to show up and be delegates [at the March 1 precinct caucus],” Bicott said.

Bicott spent his first days on the job at the Minnesota State Fair, setting up a booth for Paul, who was the only presidential candidate of either party to have a free-standing operation at the event. 

At the Paul booth, Bicott said he collected more than one thousand names of interested voters that he will contact over the next few weeks. Then, he and a group of about 20 active volunteers will reach out further. “We will do some training to teach people about the caucus process,” he said.  “I’m confident we will do very well.” 

Bicott, 31, is chair of the Minnesota Young Republicans, although he does not represent the group in his work for Paul. But young people and college students are a target demo for Paul, as they were for his father Ron Paul, who controlled Minnesota’s 38 delegates to the Republican National Convention in 2012 that nominated Mitt Romney. 

Bicott believes that Rand Paul holds the same appeal as his father.  “They both do a very good job of getting new people into the party,” he said. And Bicott says the candidate has a special attraction for millennials who, he said, tend to be libertarian. 

“Millenials are not necessarily about what party you belong to but what you support," he said. "[They] support smaller government and more voluntary solutions. The libertarian philosophy is that government shouldn’t be involved in social issues.”

Paul opposes same sex marriage and abortion, but Bicott said he still gets libertarian support “because he [Paul} doesn’t think values should be forced on people through government.”

A booth at the State Fair and a staff campaign director aren’t Paul’s only ties to the state.  Matt Pagano, formerly political director for the Minnesota Republican Party, is in Iowa working for a political action committee that supports Paul. And Paul’s national communications director is Sergio Gor, who served as press secretary to former Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Paul himself has yet to step foot in Minnesota, unlike candidates Gov. Scott Walker and Gov. Chris Christie. But Bicott says an appearance is in the offing.

And there is soon to be a bigger Paul real estate presence. Bicott said he’s looking for space for a Rand Paul for President office that he hopes to open soon.

Abeler for Senate

Jim Abeler

Not long ago, former state representative and U.S. Senate candidate Jim Abeler made it clear he would consider returning to politics to represent state Senate District 53 in Anoka. Today Abeler, a Republican, made it official with an announcement that he will kick off his campaign October 6.

Republicans have represented the district, which includes Anoka, Ramsey, Andover, and Coon Rapids, for multiple election cycles. Sen. Branden Petersen, a popular incumbent, announced this summer that he would not run again for the senate seat to pursue non-political career goals.

Several names have surfaced as possible contenders. At one point there were a dozen names that insiders said were considering the seat. But, the competition for the Republican endorsement appears to have narrowed.

Besides Abeler, the seat has one other announced candidate, Republican activist Andy Aplikowski who is vice-chair of the sixth congressional district. Aplikowski is a neighbor, friend, and admirer of Petersen, a libertarian-leaning conservative who was the only Republican senator to vote in favor of same-sex marriage in 2013.

Abeler was also known as a Republican with an independent streak during his 16 years as state representative. He was one of six Republican legislators who, in 2008, voted to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of a transportation funding bill.

Both Abeler and Aplikowski list the state budget as their top concern and frame the issue with similar language, stating that it’s a matter of setting priorities not raising taxes.

On October 12, Rafael Cruz, the father and chief surrogate of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, will be in Minnesota. He’ll talk to members of the Freedom Club, address a public event in Woodbury, and do a round of media interviews.  

Why devote so much time in a state where activists have shown little interest in Cruz?

Janet Biehoffer, the national committeewoman of the Minnesota Republican Party, says that GOP presidential candidates are reconsidering courting states like Minnesota thanks to the new rules regarding how delegates will be bound to candidates at the Republican National Convention next July.

According to those new rules: based on the results of primaries and caucuses, all delegates are bound to their candidates through the first floor ballot in Cleveland — as long as the candidate remains in the race.

“However, if no presidential candidate has enough votes to win on the first ballot, as of the second ballot, every Minnesota national delegate’s vote [along with all other delegates’ votes] will be up for grabs,” Biehoffer explained. “Thus laying the groundwork in Minnesota is a wise move for presidential candidates.”

Minnesota will send 38 delegates to the Republican Party national convention next July in Cleveland. Each of the state’s congressional districts elects three delegates.  Eleven delegates are elected at the state GOP convention in May, and the party’s three Republican National Committee members — Biehoffer, Chris Tiedeman, and party chair Keith Downey — are automatic delegates.

The delegates will be bound proportionately by the results of a poll taken at the March 1 precinct caucuses.  The proportionality will be determined by the percentages that a candidate receives, provided he or she receives a minimum of 10 percent.  

Confusing? Yes it is, acknowledges Biehoffer, which is why she has been conferring regularly with RNC attorneys and educating activists and congressional district leaders on the process. “But, it opens the door to a lot of possibilities,” she said. 

Biehoffer thinks that Republicans will know whether a candidate has enough first ballot delegates to get the nomination by mid-April, after the states have held their primaries and caucuses.

If there is no clear first-ballot winner, the likelihood grows that Minnesotans will have actual face time with more candidates. Or at least their surrogates.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul recently released a list of endorsements from state leaders, including those in Minnesota, many who used the word liberty or its synonyms to explain their support.

“He believes in a country where our personal freedoms and liberty are paramount,” said Nevada Assemblyman John Moore.

“I believe Rand Paul, among all the candidates, understands and will resolutely defend Religious Liberty," said State Rep. Anderegg of Utah.

“Sen. Paul's priority is freeing citizens and putting the people back in charge of their lives,” said Minnesota state Sen. Roger Chamberlain. 

Clearly, liberty and libertarian are a favorite term for Republicans. In Minnesota, there’s even a Republican Liberty Caucus, chaired by Neil Lynch, who also has endorsed Paul. And the party has a component of self-described libertarian Republicans like former state Sen. Branden Petersen (another Paul endorser) and party activist Bill Jungbauer. The Liberty Minnesota political action committee states that its goal is to empower “liberty-minded voters.”

But do not confuse liberty or libertarian Republicans with actual Libertarians. I made that mistake — in a story for MinnPost that referred to Jungbauer as a Libertarian, capital L — and soon after received an email from S.L. Malleck, vice chair of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota, who wanted to explain the distinction, and what’s going on with the Libertarian Party of Minnesota: 

MinnPost: Who are the members of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota?
S.L. Malleck: I think it’s safe to say we are the third largest political party in the state. Our fundraising has more than quintupled from five years ago, although we are small in that effort compared to what the Ds [DFL] and Rs [Republican] do. [LPN reported raising $42,800 in 2014.] The number of people who follow our Facebook page is the third largest in Minnesota. We are at about 200 dues-paying members. Five years ago we had about 35. 

MP: What are the party's strengths?
SM: I think our main strength is our comprehensive principle of supporting liberty on all issues all of the time. When I was staffing our booth at the State Fair, I was able to say that Libertarians believe people should be able to live their lives as they choose, and spend their money as they choose, as they as long as they don’t impinge on another person’s right. And there’s no other party that can express their philosophy that simply.

S.L. Malleck

MP: Is it really that simple?
SM: Yes, we support all civil liberties. Unlike other people that try to pick which ones they like and which ones they don’t, we support all. We strongly support a free and open marketplace. We strongly support the right to self-defense. We are strong supporters of the First, Second and Fourth Amendments. We’re opposed to foreign interventionism in war.

MP: I noticed you didn’t mention abortion rights …
SM: Abortion is one of the few issues I can’t give you a good response on because both sides the argument can be made form the libertarian perspective: life should be protected or a woman has a right to do what she wants with her body. Libertarians are split on this issue, so our stance is just keep the government out of it and let individuals make their own decisions as to what their consciences allow.

MP: Given the party’s small size, how can it influence elections?
SM: We are already influencing elections. We have five elected Libertarians in Minnesota, a Pine City school board member and four City Council members in St. Peter and Crystal. These are local offices. These are races we can definitely compete in. To get to the next level to have success in partisan races, we need to be included in debates. In the public’s eyes, debate inclusion is seen as legitimacy.

MP: Why do some Republicans describe themselves as libertarian? 
SM: There are two types. There are Republican libertarians who truly believe in liberty. Others are conservatives and see libertarian as a hip new way to describe themselves as conservatives. Some are truly libertarian and some are not. 

MP: Rand Paul brands himself a libertarian and his Republican supporters use the word a lot. What do you think of the use of the term liberty as a political message?
SM: Rand Paul is libertarian leaning on certain issues, for example: surveillance. But he supports continuing the drug war. Conservatives tend to talk about freedom, but what they do is just the opposite. Bush [Pres. George W.] promoted TARP [the 2008 government program that purchased assets from banks to strengthen the financial sector]. When big institutions get government support and little guy is paying for those efforts, that is not freedom.

MP: What is the difference between the Libertarian Party and the Independence Party?
SM: The Independence Party is a centrist party that moves in an authoritarian direction, supporting a government approach. We are centrist in a pro-liberty direction. Let me give you an example. We have the FDA, which regulates food as well as pharmaceutical drugs. But the market is capable of performing the regulatory function. A great example is Underwriters Laboratories – UL – a private, for-profit company. And UL has competitors. We believe we should rely more on entrepreneurs to do things that government is spending a lot of money on and not doing very well.

MP: How do you keep people engaged in the Libertarian Party movement?
SM: Unfortunately, we don’t have the large infrastructure that the Democrats and Republicans do. Their candidates dominate the headlines. We don’t have that. The way we keep people engaged is by taking active stances on issues. We took a strong stance opposing the marriage amendment and supporting gay marriage, and we built bridges to some people on the left.

MP: So do you attract party members from the left and the right? 
SM: We have former DFL activists who have joined the Libertarian Party. And we have activists who used to be Republicans.

Rafael Cruz, father of Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, appeared to have little difficulty selling his son to members of the conservative Freedom Club at their luncheon meeting Monday at the Minneapolis Club.

But it wasn’t the younger Cruz’s positions on taxes or social issues or gun rights that made an impression.  It was the depiction of Ted Cruz’s personality — brash, extremely conservative, and unapologetic — as communicated by his father, a pastor who is equally unswerving in his belief that the future of the United States lies in Christianity and the Bible.

Many seemed to appreciate the directness.  “I like people who say what it is,” said Maria de la Paz, vice chair of the Republican Hispanic Assembly. 

“I think a lot people, even if they don’t agree with his positions, if they believe he is telling the truth they will support him,” said Tom Colter, a Cruz supporter from North Hudson, Wisconsin. “Authenticity counts more than it ever has in the past.”

In an interview after his talk, Cruz underlined what he believes is the core of his son’s appeal. “Two things that you can take to the bank with Ted Cruz,” said Rafael. “Number one he will tell you the truth and number two, he will do what he says he’s going to do.”

Cruz rejects the idea that an absolutist like his son would have troubling enacting his agenda with a less than cooperative Congress. “Ronald Reagan had a Democratic House and yet Ronald Reagan got a lot accomplished… because Ronald Reagan had a mandate from the American people,” he said.  

Ted Cruz is seeking that mandate in part from evangelical Christians. Rafael Cruz said he had just learned that David Barton, an influential evangelical leader and political activist, would be leading one of the Ted Cruz super-Pacs. The senior Cruz described the move as monumental in appealing to “a bloc of the population that has been basically absent from the political process in very high numbers.”

Cruz, a Cuban immigrant who fought in the Batista resistance movement before he emigrated on a student visa, uses his own experiences and opinions to illuminate his son’s candidacy.

“One of the things I was so disappointed in, in President Obama, among many things, is that he went around the world apologizing for America and telling people America was not an exceptional country,” he said.  “But I disagree totally. America is the most exceptional country in the world…. When I was sitting in the Senate chambers seeing my son being sworn in as U.S. Senator, I couldn’t contain the tears from my eyes.”

While Cruz answered questions about his son’s positions in unequivocal language, he avoided directness about the front-runner in the Republican field, Donald Trump, whose supporters Ted Cruz hopes to attract in the event Trump leaves the race. 

“Donald Trump is fulfilling a need,” Cruz said.  “Donald Trump is addressing America’s frustrations.”

But Cruz couldn’t resist an indirect comparison. “Ted is a consistent conservative, a constitutional conservative with a proven record.” 

Cruz also contends his son has the most viable campaign in terms of fundraising.  He said the campaign pulled in more than $14 million in the last reporting period from more than 175,000 small donors. (The Ted Cruz Super-Pacs are funded by multi-million dollar donations.)

Cruz’s Minnesota organization is fledgling at best as the campaign has concentrated on the early primary and caucus states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. Rafael promised a stronger Minnesota organization is to come. But like the candidate himself, Rafael said, the organization will never be an establishment one.

Winning a precinct caucus in Minnesota can’t be done by a grandiose gesture, by riding a wave of destiny.

Marty Seifert

Just ask Marty Seifert, the former Minnesota House minority leader whose organization and persistence led to victory at the Republican gubernatorial straw polls in 2010 and 2014, results that have prompted several GOP presidential campaigns to seek his support for 2016. 

Seifert was a state chair for Scott Walker. When Walker dropped out of the presidential field, representatives for Marco Rubio and Rand Paul reached out.  “It was less than 24 hours when both of those campaigns contacted me,” Seifert said. 

“I don’t hold any office, so I'm not sure why people are so hot to trot but they are interested in how we did it,” he said.    

It was a lot of effort and a lot of work, Seifert recalled. “It takes months of organizing. We had people identified in every county as Seifert leaders or campaign captains. And we had a lot of current and former lawmakers, either a senator or a House member … read letters on my behalf.  We really targeted those people,” he said.

That display of support is particularly effective, Seifert believes because “generally people will say,  ‘I know that representative so and so, and if they’re for Marty Seifert he must be a good guy.’ We really capitalized on that aspect of things.”    

In 2010, Seifert won the precinct caucus straw poll with just over 50 percent of the vote. In 2014, he won it with 29 percent of the vote. (In both cases, Seifert eventually lost his bid to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee — to Tom Emmer in 2010 and to Jeff Johnson in 2014.)

Sen. Dave Thompson

In the 2014 poll, Seifert barely edged out state Sen. Dave Thompson, also a Walker backer, who had a different strategy. “I had the benefit of name recognition,” said Thompson, who had been a the host of radio talk show and  a conservative favorite known for taking on organized labor with legislative proposals and pithy quotes. 

But that won’t work in the race to win the Republican nomination for president, Thompson contends. “It’s money, money, money,” he said. “They just flat out have to have money.  Yes, you can do things with volunteers but you have to pay people to be organized. That’s why so many people think it comes down Jeb Bush.” 

Seifert concurs on the need for paid staff. “Unless you have super dedicated volunteers, you have to have a day-to-day person who is doing this, which I had when I was running for governor,” he said. “It’s not a casual thing. You can't end up in mid-February and get people out for the caucuses on March 1.” 

A few Republican presidential candidates have named state leaders. State Sen. David Hann has pledged his support for Carly Fiorina. Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson is working on behalf Marco Rubio.  Rand Paul has a paid state organizer and the benefit of an organization his father Ron Paul developed when Minnesota delegates pledged their votes to Paul at the 2014 GOP national convention.

“But it’s anybody’s game in Minnesota right now,” Seifert said.

A couple of weeks ago, Rafael Cruz, the father of Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, spent a few hours in the Twin Cities trying to convince people that his son is a humble man with vision of a better America formed by the constitution and his Christian values.  

“Ted truly has a servant’s heart,” the elder Cruz said in an interview after a speech.

But as Cruz incrementally rises in national polls and substantially builds his base of donors, his critics are openly challenging the sincerity of that message.

Former president George W. Bush, for one, reportedly let loose his concerns at a recent fundraiser for his brother Jeb. As an article in Politico detailed, Bush spoke nicely of the rest of the GOP presidential field. But when the subject came to Cruz, Bush flatly described him as “opportunistic,”  adding “I just don’t like the guy.”

In the New York Times, Frank Bruni followed up with an op-ed commentary that referred to Cruz as “cynically opportunistic and self-serving” and “a menacing, stalking, relentless force.”

The pointedness of those critiques prompted me to look again at the entire interview I did with Ted Cruz’s father where, at the time, I  noted his comments about evangelicals, a group that Ted Cruz wants firmly in his camp.

Cruz and his father, a pastor, have made a major effort to connect with evangelicals by communicating their shared Christian values.  And they may well have a strong ideological bond. But Rafael Cruz’s dispassionate explanation of the evangelical attraction only reinforced the contention that Ted Cruz’s campaign is guided more by the political necessity of reliable primary voters  than a personal dedication to principles.

When Rafael talked about evangelicals, for example, his cited the recent addition of David Baron, who just took over the SuperPac for Ted Cruz:  “This means that we have one of the most respected evangelicals in America leading the SuperPac,” said Rafael Cruz. “This is going to every positive news for people of faith and I think it’s also going to attract a lot of evangelical donors to the campaign.”

When I asked about the concern that appealing to the most hard-core elements of the base undermined the ability to eventually appeal to more centrist voters, Rafael responded: 

OK, no.  Actually he’s not just trying appeal to wing[s] of the party. The reason I mention evangelicals is because of this.  According to a poll that George Barna [who does research and training for religious groups and churches] did in 2012, right after the 2012 election, in the 2012 election there were 12 million evangelical Christians not registered to vote and an additional 26 million that didn't vote.  That’s a total of 38 million evangelical Christians that didn't vote in the 2012 election out of an estimated total 89 million. Suppose just ten percent more vote in this election, that will be 3.6 million additional votes. That would change any election in the country so it just represents a bloc of the population that has been basically absent from the political process in very high numbers. So it is just pointing out one of the challenges that we have in prior elections because this segment of the population has been uninvolved in the political process. As a matter of fact, Ted Cruz is trying to attract every segment of the population. This just happens to be a segment that has been absent to a very large extent.

The media was the message for the crowd gathered at a Bloomington bar to watch  the third Republican presidential candidate debate.

The group, brought together by the Young Republicans affiliate of the state party, appeared mixed on their favorite candidates — but completely unified in their agreement that the CNBC broadcast from Boulder, CO, was designed to be more of a glib joust than an exchange of ideas.

“I love what Ted Cruz said about the media,” said Susan Tangen of Inver Grove Heights. “That was really notable. I mean, I think the questions … just were not very smart questions.”

Cruz, who had one of the better showings of the evening, deftly parodied the moderators’ line of questioning. “And you look at the questions: 'Donald Trump, are  you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich,will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen,'” he said. “How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?”

The CNBC moderators did try to probe on some substance; they questioned how the Carson and Rubio flat tax plans could result in increasing revenue. They tried to get Sen. Rand Paul to explain how raising the age for Medicare eligibility would make the program more sustainable. They wanted Ohio Gov.  Kasich to repeat his criticisms of Trump’s and Carson’s tax cut proposals, which Kasich did, calling them “empty promises.”

But while the candidates attempted to craft arcane policy details into sound bites, the more quotable comments overshadowed — particularly Rubio's successful deflection of a question about political action committees.  “The Democrats have the ultimate Super PAC,” he said.  “It’s called the mainstream media.”

The group in Bloomington, like the crowd in Boulder, responded with applause, as they did when New Jersey Gov. Christie charged at a question about regulating fantasy football. “We have $19 trillion in debt, we have people out of work, we have ISIS and Al Qaeda attacking us and we’re talking about fantasy football,” he thundered.

Amy from Minneapolis, who declined to give her last name, sympathized with the candidates’ frustrations, but said the debates are giving the public what it’s asking for.

“People like to see, especially when you’re watching something on TV, you want to see a little drama, you want to see a little laughter, comedy,” she said. “No matter what your political beliefs are, you’re getting a little bit of what society likes to feed people, especially Americans, and we’re all eating it up.”

Roger Johnson

Roger Johnson of Coon Rapids received the provisional endorsement of the DFL leadership in Minnesota Senate District 35 to run for the seat vacated by Republican Branden Petersen. As the only declared DFL candidate for the seat, he likely will receive the DFL’s full endorsement next month.

But that’s where likelihood fades for Johnson, a retired college professor and a DFL activist. He will face a Republican opponent in a special election Feb. 9 in a district that represents Coon Rapids, Anoka, Ramsey and Andover — an area where Republicans have held Senate and House seats for decades.

“Is it an uphill battle? You bet,” Johnson said. “But it is a battle I'm willing to wage.” 

If political pedigree is a weapon, Johnson is well armed. His father, who came from Sweden as a child, learned the trades of construction, carpentry and masonry, and became active in the organized labor movement.

The elder Johnson became friends with a couple of like-minded political activists named Hubert Humphrey and Art Naftalin. As Johnson tells the story, on April 15, 1944, his father, Humphrey, Naftalin, and a half dozen others met to create a new party, forging an alliance among Democrats, farmers, and labor advocates: the DFL.

“The strength of the labor movement in American is ingrained in my very being,” he wrote in a letter to the DFL endorsing committee. “My father was there at the formulation of the DFL Party in Minnesota when I was just a pre-school child.”

Education, then and now, shapes Johnson’s political priorities. “My father was always very supportive of schools, that I might become something someday that he only longed to be,” he said. “Schools are very important to me. Just about everything I do is to find opportunities for young people.”

Specifically, Johnson is concerned about funding for the Anoka-Hennepin School District. “They're considering cutting seven to eight million dollars out of their budget next year because the legislature has been unable to provide sufficient funds,” he said. 

Johnson believes that as a Democrat, he would have more input than the district’s GOP representation in shaping education policy. Funding, he says, is the most serious but certainly not the only problem for Anoka-Hennepin schools.

“We have too many mandates without money. We’ve got an immigration population that’s growing and we need to make sure they have the wherewithal to succeed. Every child that we have in this school district needs that same attention,” he said, adding that education policy must address “the fact that demographically we are losing workers, we are a graying state.”

Johnson doesn’t know yet who his GOP opponent will be. Four candidates — Andy Aplikowski, Jim Abeler, Don Huizenga, and Reid Oines — are competing for the Republican endorsement, which will be decided on Nov. 14, with the likelihood of a primary face-off in January.    

Johnson acknowledges that the number of Republican candidates is indicative of the conservative strength of the district. But he also contends the DFL should have a role to play.

“It’s amazing how many union members live in this district, yet they vote on the conservative side,” he said. “They’re convinced that Democrats are going to take away their gun rights, their snowmobile trails, but when it comes to Roger Johnson, they don’t have a lot to fear.”

A Coon Rapids resident for 41 years, Johnson has tried and failed to receive the DFL endorsement in two past elections. With the near certainty of an endorsement now, he said he’s “willing to shake the tree one more time” in an area where Republican preference is as sturdy as an oak.

Republican presidential candidate Paul Rand is taking a swing through Minnesota Monday, delivering what his campaign calls a “unique” message to college students.

All three of Paul’s stops are geared to students. The first two are on campus at the University of Minnesota and University of Minnesota-Duluth. The third is in Rochester.

In a phone interview during a campaign swing through South Carolina, Paul explained his appeal to students in a single phrase: “phone warrants.” 

“Students believe that the government shouldn’t collect your records,” he said. “They believe that the government went too far in collecting all of our phone records.” 

The U.S. senator from Kentucky is largely credited with temporarily stopping the renewal of the Patriot Act, the set of laws enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that gave the U.S. government virtually unlimited access to American phone records. After its forced expiration, President Obama signed the renewal in early June.

Paul is milking that victory and his libertarian credentials in speeches and rallies at college campuses nationwide. In Minnesota, Rand’s father, Ron Paul, had a similar approach during his presidential campaign in 2012. It resonated so well that the delegates who went to the Republican National Convention that year cast their votes for Paul over Mitt Romney.

“Frankly [today], Minnesota needs Republican like me,” Rand Paul said.  “I think Minnesotans want to be left alone.”

In national polls, Paul continues to hover around 4 percent, allowing him to make the cut for the fourth Republican debate Tuesday. Paul’s appearance in Minnesota comes on the eve of the Fox Business Network debate, where he will be one of eight candidates on stage in a newly winnowed field. 

I asked him what he hoped to communicate in this smaller group. “I’m really the only fiscal conservative on the stage because I’m willing to hold the line on military and domestic spending,” he replied.

He elaborated that his tax plan demonstrated that commitment by leveraging a 14.5 percent flat tax to cover all domestic spending, including Social Security and Medicare.

Under the Paul tax proposals, those programs would get priority funding but enrollment would be raised from 65 to age 70 over the course of a generation. “If you want to save Medicare and you want to save Social Security you have to raise the age,” he said. “You don’t have a choice, because we are living longer and our families are getting smaller, so you have to raise the age.”   

At a Students for Rand rally at the University of Minnesota, Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul led with the one-two punch of his appeal for younger voters.

The U.S. senator from Kentucky began his speech to about 200 people, mostly students, by stoking concerns about privacy. “I don’t want a government that’s looking at all my phone records. I don’t want a government that has the ability to collect them all and send them to some billion-dollar underground facility in Utah,” he said.  

“They’re also collecting your credit card confirmation,” he said.  “The government —it’s none of their damn business what you do with your credit card."

Next up was reducing criminal penalties for marijuana. “I’m not here to advocate for marijuana, I’m here to advocate for freedom,” he said. 

Paul made sure to differentiate himself from that other candidate reaching out to young voters. “If you think, wow, Bernie’s great, Bernie [Sanders] wants to give me free stuff … there is no free lunch. Bernie can only pay for your college by taking it from somebody else,” he said.

Paul’s remarks appeared to resonate with the crowd that responded with subdued applause but stayed in their chairs for the duration of his 30-minute speech.

U of M student Spencer Gressen, of White Bear Lake, typified the audience. “I’m interested in anything political,” Gressen said. “He’s a libertarian and I myself am a libertarian.”

Paul is only the second presidential candidate to visit the state. The other was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ended his candidacy last month. Like Walker, Paul has an affinity for Minnesota. The state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention in 2012 backed his father, Ron Paul. 

For Rand Paul to get to that point, he needs to persuade the elusive young voter and other supporters to go to precinct caucuses on March 1. He says he’s relying on the intangible – “We have more committed voters” – and the concrete – “We put people in place on the ground.”

Paul hovers around 4 percent support in most national polls, well behind Ben Carson and Donald Trump. But he said he believes neither Carson nor Trump will be the nominee, citing the same polls that show a majority of Republican voters are uncommitted as the Republican field heads to debate No. 4 tonight in Milwaukee.

On October 12, Rafael Cruz, the father and chief surrogate of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, will be in Minnesota. He’ll talk to members of the Freedom Club, address a public event in Woodbury, and do a round of media interviews.  

Why devote so much time in a state where activists have shown little interest in Cruz?

Janet Biehoffer, the national committeewoman of the Minnesota Republican Party, says that GOP presidential candidates are reconsidering courting states like Minnesota thanks to the new rules regarding how delegates will be bound to candidates at the Republican National Convention next July.

According to those new rules: based on the results of primaries and caucuses, all delegates are bound to their candidates through the first floor ballot in Cleveland — as long as the candidate remains in the race.

“However, if no presidential candidate has enough votes to win on the first ballot, as of the second ballot, every Minnesota national delegate’s vote [along with all other delegates’ votes] will be up for grabs,” Biehoffer explained. “Thus laying the groundwork in Minnesota is a wise move for presidential candidates.”

Minnesota will send 38 delegates to the Republican Party national convention next July in Cleveland. Each of the state’s congressional districts elects three delegates.  Eleven delegates are elected at the state GOP convention in May, and the party’s three Republican National Committee members — Biehoffer, Chris Tiedeman, and party chair Keith Downey — are automatic delegates.

The delegates will be bound proportionately by the results of a poll taken at the March 1 precinct caucuses.  The proportionality will be determined by the percentages that a candidate receives, provided he or she receives a minimum of 10 percent.  

Confusing? Yes it is, acknowledges Biehoffer, which is why she has been conferring regularly with RNC attorneys and educating activists and congressional district leaders on the process. “But, it opens the door to a lot of possibilities,” she said. 

Biehoffer thinks that Republicans will know whether a candidate has enough first ballot delegates to get the nomination by mid-April, after the states have held their primaries and caucuses.

If there is no clear first-ballot winner, the likelihood grows that Minnesotans will have actual face time with more candidates. Or at least their surrogates.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul recently released a list of endorsements from state leaders, including those in Minnesota, many who used the word liberty or its synonyms to explain their support.

“He believes in a country where our personal freedoms and liberty are paramount,” said Nevada Assemblyman John Moore.

“I believe Rand Paul, among all the candidates, understands and will resolutely defend Religious Liberty," said State Rep. Anderegg of Utah.

“Sen. Paul's priority is freeing citizens and putting the people back in charge of their lives,” said Minnesota state Sen. Roger Chamberlain. 

Clearly, liberty and libertarian are a favorite term for Republicans. In Minnesota, there’s even a Republican Liberty Caucus, chaired by Neil Lynch, who also has endorsed Paul. And the party has a component of self-described libertarian Republicans like former state Sen. Branden Petersen (another Paul endorser) and party activist Bill Jungbauer. The Liberty Minnesota political action committee states that its goal is to empower “liberty-minded voters.”

But do not confuse liberty or libertarian Republicans with actual Libertarians. I made that mistake — in a story for MinnPost that referred to Jungbauer as a Libertarian, capital L — and soon after received an email from S.L. Malleck, vice chair of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota, who wanted to explain the distinction, and what’s going on with the Libertarian Party of Minnesota: 

MinnPost: Who are the members of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota?
S.L. Malleck: I think it’s safe to say we are the third largest political party in the state. Our fundraising has more than quintupled from five years ago, although we are small in that effort compared to what the Ds [DFL] and Rs [Republican] do. [LPN reported raising $42,800 in 2014.] The number of people who follow our Facebook page is the third largest in Minnesota. We are at about 200 dues-paying members. Five years ago we had about 35. 

MP: What are the party's strengths?
SM: I think our main strength is our comprehensive principle of supporting liberty on all issues all of the time. When I was staffing our booth at the State Fair, I was able to say that Libertarians believe people should be able to live their lives as they choose, and spend their money as they choose, as they as long as they don’t impinge on another person’s right. And there’s no other party that can express their philosophy that simply.

S.L. Malleck

MP: Is it really that simple?
SM: Yes, we support all civil liberties. Unlike other people that try to pick which ones they like and which ones they don’t, we support all. We strongly support a free and open marketplace. We strongly support the right to self-defense. We are strong supporters of the First, Second and Fourth Amendments. We’re opposed to foreign interventionism in war.

MP: I noticed you didn’t mention abortion rights …
SM: Abortion is one of the few issues I can’t give you a good response on because both sides the argument can be made form the libertarian perspective: life should be protected or a woman has a right to do what she wants with her body. Libertarians are split on this issue, so our stance is just keep the government out of it and let individuals make their own decisions as to what their consciences allow.

MP: Given the party’s small size, how can it influence elections?
SM: We are already influencing elections. We have five elected Libertarians in Minnesota, a Pine City school board member and four City Council members in St. Peter and Crystal. These are local offices. These are races we can definitely compete in. To get to the next level to have success in partisan races, we need to be included in debates. In the public’s eyes, debate inclusion is seen as legitimacy.

MP: Why do some Republicans describe themselves as libertarian? 
SM: There are two types. There are Republican libertarians who truly believe in liberty. Others are conservatives and see libertarian as a hip new way to describe themselves as conservatives. Some are truly libertarian and some are not. 

MP: Rand Paul brands himself a libertarian and his Republican supporters use the word a lot. What do you think of the use of the term liberty as a political message?
SM: Rand Paul is libertarian leaning on certain issues, for example: surveillance. But he supports continuing the drug war. Conservatives tend to talk about freedom, but what they do is just the opposite. Bush [Pres. George W.] promoted TARP [the 2008 government program that purchased assets from banks to strengthen the financial sector]. When big institutions get government support and little guy is paying for those efforts, that is not freedom.

MP: What is the difference between the Libertarian Party and the Independence Party?
SM: The Independence Party is a centrist party that moves in an authoritarian direction, supporting a government approach. We are centrist in a pro-liberty direction. Let me give you an example. We have the FDA, which regulates food as well as pharmaceutical drugs. But the market is capable of performing the regulatory function. A great example is Underwriters Laboratories – UL – a private, for-profit company. And UL has competitors. We believe we should rely more on entrepreneurs to do things that government is spending a lot of money on and not doing very well.

MP: How do you keep people engaged in the Libertarian Party movement?
SM: Unfortunately, we don’t have the large infrastructure that the Democrats and Republicans do. Their candidates dominate the headlines. We don’t have that. The way we keep people engaged is by taking active stances on issues. We took a strong stance opposing the marriage amendment and supporting gay marriage, and we built bridges to some people on the left.

MP: So do you attract party members from the left and the right? 
SM: We have former DFL activists who have joined the Libertarian Party. And we have activists who used to be Republicans.

Rafael Cruz, father of Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, appeared to have little difficulty selling his son to members of the conservative Freedom Club at their luncheon meeting Monday at the Minneapolis Club.

But it wasn’t the younger Cruz’s positions on taxes or social issues or gun rights that made an impression.  It was the depiction of Ted Cruz’s personality — brash, extremely conservative, and unapologetic — as communicated by his father, a pastor who is equally unswerving in his belief that the future of the United States lies in Christianity and the Bible.

Many seemed to appreciate the directness.  “I like people who say what it is,” said Maria de la Paz, vice chair of the Republican Hispanic Assembly. 

“I think a lot people, even if they don’t agree with his positions, if they believe he is telling the truth they will support him,” said Tom Colter, a Cruz supporter from North Hudson, Wisconsin. “Authenticity counts more than it ever has in the past.”

In an interview after his talk, Cruz underlined what he believes is the core of his son’s appeal. “Two things that you can take to the bank with Ted Cruz,” said Rafael. “Number one he will tell you the truth and number two, he will do what he says he’s going to do.”

Cruz rejects the idea that an absolutist like his son would have troubling enacting his agenda with a less than cooperative Congress. “Ronald Reagan had a Democratic House and yet Ronald Reagan got a lot accomplished… because Ronald Reagan had a mandate from the American people,” he said.  

Ted Cruz is seeking that mandate in part from evangelical Christians. Rafael Cruz said he had just learned that David Barton, an influential evangelical leader and political activist, would be leading one of the Ted Cruz super-Pacs. The senior Cruz described the move as monumental in appealing to “a bloc of the population that has been basically absent from the political process in very high numbers.”

Cruz, a Cuban immigrant who fought in the Batista resistance movement before he emigrated on a student visa, uses his own experiences and opinions to illuminate his son’s candidacy.

“One of the things I was so disappointed in, in President Obama, among many things, is that he went around the world apologizing for America and telling people America was not an exceptional country,” he said.  “But I disagree totally. America is the most exceptional country in the world…. When I was sitting in the Senate chambers seeing my son being sworn in as U.S. Senator, I couldn’t contain the tears from my eyes.”

While Cruz answered questions about his son’s positions in unequivocal language, he avoided directness about the front-runner in the Republican field, Donald Trump, whose supporters Ted Cruz hopes to attract in the event Trump leaves the race. 

“Donald Trump is fulfilling a need,” Cruz said.  “Donald Trump is addressing America’s frustrations.”

But Cruz couldn’t resist an indirect comparison. “Ted is a consistent conservative, a constitutional conservative with a proven record.” 

Cruz also contends his son has the most viable campaign in terms of fundraising.  He said the campaign pulled in more than $14 million in the last reporting period from more than 175,000 small donors. (The Ted Cruz Super-Pacs are funded by multi-million dollar donations.)

Cruz’s Minnesota organization is fledgling at best as the campaign has concentrated on the early primary and caucus states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. Rafael promised a stronger Minnesota organization is to come. But like the candidate himself, Rafael said, the organization will never be an establishment one.

Winning a precinct caucus in Minnesota can’t be done by a grandiose gesture, by riding a wave of destiny.

Marty Seifert

Just ask Marty Seifert, the former Minnesota House minority leader whose organization and persistence led to victory at the Republican gubernatorial straw polls in 2010 and 2014, results that have prompted several GOP presidential campaigns to seek his support for 2016. 

Seifert was a state chair for Scott Walker. When Walker dropped out of the presidential field, representatives for Marco Rubio and Rand Paul reached out.  “It was less than 24 hours when both of those campaigns contacted me,” Seifert said. 

“I don’t hold any office, so I'm not sure why people are so hot to trot but they are interested in how we did it,” he said.    

It was a lot of effort and a lot of work, Seifert recalled. “It takes months of organizing. We had people identified in every county as Seifert leaders or campaign captains. And we had a lot of current and former lawmakers, either a senator or a House member … read letters on my behalf.  We really targeted those people,” he said.

That display of support is particularly effective, Seifert believes because “generally people will say,  ‘I know that representative so and so, and if they’re for Marty Seifert he must be a good guy.’ We really capitalized on that aspect of things.”    

In 2010, Seifert won the precinct caucus straw poll with just over 50 percent of the vote. In 2014, he won it with 29 percent of the vote. (In both cases, Seifert eventually lost his bid to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee — to Tom Emmer in 2010 and to Jeff Johnson in 2014.)

Sen. Dave Thompson

In the 2014 poll, Seifert barely edged out state Sen. Dave Thompson, also a Walker backer, who had a different strategy. “I had the benefit of name recognition,” said Thompson, who had been a the host of radio talk show and  a conservative favorite known for taking on organized labor with legislative proposals and pithy quotes. 

But that won’t work in the race to win the Republican nomination for president, Thompson contends. “It’s money, money, money,” he said. “They just flat out have to have money.  Yes, you can do things with volunteers but you have to pay people to be organized. That’s why so many people think it comes down Jeb Bush.” 

Seifert concurs on the need for paid staff. “Unless you have super dedicated volunteers, you have to have a day-to-day person who is doing this, which I had when I was running for governor,” he said. “It’s not a casual thing. You can't end up in mid-February and get people out for the caucuses on March 1.” 

A few Republican presidential candidates have named state leaders. State Sen. David Hann has pledged his support for Carly Fiorina. Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson is working on behalf Marco Rubio.  Rand Paul has a paid state organizer and the benefit of an organization his father Ron Paul developed when Minnesota delegates pledged their votes to Paul at the 2014 GOP national convention.

“But it’s anybody’s game in Minnesota right now,” Seifert said.

A couple of weeks ago, Rafael Cruz, the father of Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, spent a few hours in the Twin Cities trying to convince people that his son is a humble man with vision of a better America formed by the constitution and his Christian values.  

“Ted truly has a servant’s heart,” the elder Cruz said in an interview after a speech.

But as Cruz incrementally rises in national polls and substantially builds his base of donors, his critics are openly challenging the sincerity of that message.

Former president George W. Bush, for one, reportedly let loose his concerns at a recent fundraiser for his brother Jeb. As an article in Politico detailed, Bush spoke nicely of the rest of the GOP presidential field. But when the subject came to Cruz, Bush flatly described him as “opportunistic,”  adding “I just don’t like the guy.”

In the New York Times, Frank Bruni followed up with an op-ed commentary that referred to Cruz as “cynically opportunistic and self-serving” and “a menacing, stalking, relentless force.”

The pointedness of those critiques prompted me to look again at the entire interview I did with Ted Cruz’s father where, at the time, I  noted his comments about evangelicals, a group that Ted Cruz wants firmly in his camp.

Cruz and his father, a pastor, have made a major effort to connect with evangelicals by communicating their shared Christian values.  And they may well have a strong ideological bond. But Rafael Cruz’s dispassionate explanation of the evangelical attraction only reinforced the contention that Ted Cruz’s campaign is guided more by the political necessity of reliable primary voters  than a personal dedication to principles.

When Rafael talked about evangelicals, for example, his cited the recent addition of David Baron, who just took over the SuperPac for Ted Cruz:  “This means that we have one of the most respected evangelicals in America leading the SuperPac,” said Rafael Cruz. “This is going to every positive news for people of faith and I think it’s also going to attract a lot of evangelical donors to the campaign.”

When I asked about the concern that appealing to the most hard-core elements of the base undermined the ability to eventually appeal to more centrist voters, Rafael responded: 

OK, no.  Actually he’s not just trying appeal to wing[s] of the party. The reason I mention evangelicals is because of this.  According to a poll that George Barna [who does research and training for religious groups and churches] did in 2012, right after the 2012 election, in the 2012 election there were 12 million evangelical Christians not registered to vote and an additional 26 million that didn't vote.  That’s a total of 38 million evangelical Christians that didn't vote in the 2012 election out of an estimated total 89 million. Suppose just ten percent more vote in this election, that will be 3.6 million additional votes. That would change any election in the country so it just represents a bloc of the population that has been basically absent from the political process in very high numbers. So it is just pointing out one of the challenges that we have in prior elections because this segment of the population has been uninvolved in the political process. As a matter of fact, Ted Cruz is trying to attract every segment of the population. This just happens to be a segment that has been absent to a very large extent.

The media was the message for the crowd gathered at a Bloomington bar to watch  the third Republican presidential candidate debate.

The group, brought together by the Young Republicans affiliate of the state party, appeared mixed on their favorite candidates — but completely unified in their agreement that the CNBC broadcast from Boulder, CO, was designed to be more of a glib joust than an exchange of ideas.

“I love what Ted Cruz said about the media,” said Susan Tangen of Inver Grove Heights. “That was really notable. I mean, I think the questions … just were not very smart questions.”

Cruz, who had one of the better showings of the evening, deftly parodied the moderators’ line of questioning. “And you look at the questions: 'Donald Trump, are  you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich,will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen,'” he said. “How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?”

The CNBC moderators did try to probe on some substance; they questioned how the Carson and Rubio flat tax plans could result in increasing revenue. They tried to get Sen. Rand Paul to explain how raising the age for Medicare eligibility would make the program more sustainable. They wanted Ohio Gov.  Kasich to repeat his criticisms of Trump’s and Carson’s tax cut proposals, which Kasich did, calling them “empty promises.”

But while the candidates attempted to craft arcane policy details into sound bites, the more quotable comments overshadowed — particularly Rubio's successful deflection of a question about political action committees.  “The Democrats have the ultimate Super PAC,” he said.  “It’s called the mainstream media.”

The group in Bloomington, like the crowd in Boulder, responded with applause, as they did when New Jersey Gov. Christie charged at a question about regulating fantasy football. “We have $19 trillion in debt, we have people out of work, we have ISIS and Al Qaeda attacking us and we’re talking about fantasy football,” he thundered.

Amy from Minneapolis, who declined to give her last name, sympathized with the candidates’ frustrations, but said the debates are giving the public what it’s asking for.

“People like to see, especially when you’re watching something on TV, you want to see a little drama, you want to see a little laughter, comedy,” she said. “No matter what your political beliefs are, you’re getting a little bit of what society likes to feed people, especially Americans, and we’re all eating it up.”

Roger Johnson

Roger Johnson of Coon Rapids received the provisional endorsement of the DFL leadership in Minnesota Senate District 35 to run for the seat vacated by Republican Branden Petersen. As the only declared DFL candidate for the seat, he likely will receive the DFL’s full endorsement next month.

But that’s where likelihood fades for Johnson, a retired college professor and a DFL activist. He will face a Republican opponent in a special election Feb. 9 in a district that represents Coon Rapids, Anoka, Ramsey and Andover — an area where Republicans have held Senate and House seats for decades.

“Is it an uphill battle? You bet,” Johnson said. “But it is a battle I'm willing to wage.” 

If political pedigree is a weapon, Johnson is well armed. His father, who came from Sweden as a child, learned the trades of construction, carpentry and masonry, and became active in the organized labor movement.

The elder Johnson became friends with a couple of like-minded political activists named Hubert Humphrey and Art Naftalin. As Johnson tells the story, on April 15, 1944, his father, Humphrey, Naftalin, and a half dozen others met to create a new party, forging an alliance among Democrats, farmers, and labor advocates: the DFL.

“The strength of the labor movement in American is ingrained in my very being,” he wrote in a letter to the DFL endorsing committee. “My father was there at the formulation of the DFL Party in Minnesota when I was just a pre-school child.”

Education, then and now, shapes Johnson’s political priorities. “My father was always very supportive of schools, that I might become something someday that he only longed to be,” he said. “Schools are very important to me. Just about everything I do is to find opportunities for young people.”

Specifically, Johnson is concerned about funding for the Anoka-Hennepin School District. “They're considering cutting seven to eight million dollars out of their budget next year because the legislature has been unable to provide sufficient funds,” he said. 

Johnson believes that as a Democrat, he would have more input than the district’s GOP representation in shaping education policy. Funding, he says, is the most serious but certainly not the only problem for Anoka-Hennepin schools.

“We have too many mandates without money. We’ve got an immigration population that’s growing and we need to make sure they have the wherewithal to succeed. Every child that we have in this school district needs that same attention,” he said, adding that education policy must address “the fact that demographically we are losing workers, we are a graying state.”

Johnson doesn’t know yet who his GOP opponent will be. Four candidates — Andy Aplikowski, Jim Abeler, Don Huizenga, and Reid Oines — are competing for the Republican endorsement, which will be decided on Nov. 14, with the likelihood of a primary face-off in January.    

Johnson acknowledges that the number of Republican candidates is indicative of the conservative strength of the district. But he also contends the DFL should have a role to play.

“It’s amazing how many union members live in this district, yet they vote on the conservative side,” he said. “They’re convinced that Democrats are going to take away their gun rights, their snowmobile trails, but when it comes to Roger Johnson, they don’t have a lot to fear.”

A Coon Rapids resident for 41 years, Johnson has tried and failed to receive the DFL endorsement in two past elections. With the near certainty of an endorsement now, he said he’s “willing to shake the tree one more time” in an area where Republican preference is as sturdy as an oak.